“Start of Content” in “Mission Manifest”
Acknowledgments
I am lucky to have received much support to research, write, and publish this book. I am especially thankful to Cornell University Press. Michael McGandy encouraged me in the early stages, and Sarah Grossman has been an excellent editor and a good shepherd of the manuscript. Emily Conroy-Krutz and the editors of the United States in the World series offered guidance and feedback throughout the process. They placed the manuscript with peer reviewers whose reports were smart, professional, timely, and helpful. I appreciate all of them for the support.
I am grateful to my home institution, Emory and Henry College. In 2016–17, conversations with colleagues pushed me to think about the “second book.” Colleagues also nominated me for a faculty fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, which meant I could begin archival research in 2017. I also received research grants from Emory and Henry to do sustained research during the two years prior to the start of the COVID pandemic. In 2020–21, I did most of the writing during a sabbatical. I was able to finish drafting the manuscript in 2021 because of a Summer Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Emory and Henry continued its generous support during the last two years of writing and editing.
There was also a lively intellectual milieu beyond southwest Virginia. Thanks to my fellow panelists at meetings of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2020 and 2023 and the Association for Iranian Studies in 2018 and 2020, among other conferences. I appreciate the invitations in 2019 to deliver lectures on pieces of this book, first as part of the Sherman Emerging Scholar Lecture Series at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and then at the biennial conference of the Peace Corps Iran Association. I enjoyed moderating the Baskerville Institute’s webinar series in 2021–22 and am thankful to the speakers who shared their research in that forum. A special thanks to Christine Westberg, David Woodward, Michael Zirinsky, and the other former Community School students who shared their memories with me. I learned a lot while editing American-Iranian Dialogues: From Constitution to White Revolution, c. 1890s-1960s, which Bloomsbury published with its New Approaches to International History series. Thanks to Thomas Zeiler for the invitation to be part of the series, and to all of the book’s contributors: John Ghazvinian, Kelly Shannon, Kyle Olson, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Gregory Brew, Richard Garlitz, Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi, Ida Yalzadeh, Camron Amin, and Cyrus Schayegh. Sections of my chapter from that edited volume, “Alborz, Bethel, and Community: Missionary Institutions in Postwar Tehran,” appear in a modified form in chapters 4 and 5 of this book. I owe many debts of gratitude to staff and archivists at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, especially Natalie Shilstut and Kristen Gaydos, and to Susannah Burger for helping me in the archives in 2021. Thanks to Sim Smiley for scanning images from the National Archives and Records Administration, and to Bill Nelson for the excellent maps. I am eternally grateful for having mentors who remain active in my professional development. To Richard Immerman, Petra Goedde, and Jim Goode—Thanks!
Finally, I thank my parents, Kevin and Cindy, and my wife, Samantha, who provided all forms of support, including in the archives. In 2020, I was blessed by the birth of my daughter, Hazel, and it is her to whom this book is dedicated.
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